Trauma Blog

ISTSS mourns the loss of Jennifer Gonzales, Christine Loeber and Jennifer Golick, who were killed on Friday, March 9, while working at the Pathway Home, a nonprofit residential program for military veterans in California, where they counseled veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and helped them reintegrate into civilian life. Jennifer Gonzales, a member of the ISTSS community, was a clinical psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care System. She volunteered as a trainer at the nonprofit PsychArmor Institute, which provides free education and support to engage effectively with the military community.The three trauma professionals were dedicated to helping survivors and their families thrive, and their deaths are a tragic loss to the trauma community.

Parental responses are thought to be critical to children’s recovery from trauma. Parent and child PTSD often occur together (Morris, Gabert-Quillen, & Delahanty, 2012), parents appear to make important contributions to the treatment of child PTSD (Gutermann et al., 2016), and a range of parenting behaviors are associated with childhood PTSD (Williamson et al., 2017). Despite acknowledgement in the field that parents play an important role in children’s recovery from trauma, we currently have limited understanding about the processes by which parents could influence child outcomes. Improving our understanding of these mechanisms will help us better prevent and treat adverse outcomes for families after a child experiences a traumatic event. In our recent research, we have focused on the role of cognitions.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is the term used to refer to violence and abuse in various forms (including psychological, physical, sexual, financial), perpetrated by a current or former intimate partner (including spouse or other romantic or sexual partner; World Health Organization, United Nations Development Programme & United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2014). In the United States, it is estimated that more than one in three women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking from an intimate partner in their lifetimes (Black et al., 2011); prevalence and incident rates vary by measurement tools and constructs measured. IPV is associated with numerous adverse outcomes, including physical injuries, chronic health conditions, trauma-related mental health symptoms, unhealthy substance use, housing instability, and suicidality.

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ISTSS mourns the loss of Jennifer Gonzales, Christine Loeber and Jennifer Golick, who were killed on Friday, March 9, while working at the Pathway Home, a nonprofit residential program for military veterans in California, where they counseled veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and helped them reintegrate into civilian life. Jennifer Gonzales, a member of the ISTSS community, was a clinical psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care System. She volunteered as a trainer at the nonprofit PsychArmor Institute, which provides free education and support to engage effectively with the military community.The three trauma professionals were dedicated to helping survivors and their families thrive, and their deaths are a tragic loss to the trauma community.

Parental responses are thought to be critical to children’s recovery from trauma. Parent and child PTSD often occur together (Morris, Gabert-Quillen, & Delahanty, 2012), parents appear to make important contributions to the treatment of child PTSD (Gutermann et al., 2016), and a range of parenting behaviors are associated with childhood PTSD (Williamson et al., 2017). Despite acknowledgement in the field that parents play an important role in children’s recovery from trauma, we currently have limited understanding about the processes by which parents could influence child outcomes. Improving our understanding of these mechanisms will help us better prevent and treat adverse outcomes for families after a child experiences a traumatic event. In our recent research, we have focused on the role of cognitions.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is the term used to refer to violence and abuse in various forms (including psychological, physical, sexual, financial), perpetrated by a current or former intimate partner (including spouse or other romantic or sexual partner; World Health Organization, United Nations Development Programme & United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2014). In the United States, it is estimated that more than one in three women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking from an intimate partner in their lifetimes (Black et al., 2011); prevalence and incident rates vary by measurement tools and constructs measured. IPV is associated with numerous adverse outcomes, including physical injuries, chronic health conditions, trauma-related mental health symptoms, unhealthy substance use, housing instability, and suicidality.

Topiramate, an anticonvulsant agent, has been studied as a primary and adjunctive treatment for PTSD, yet little is known regarding the efficacy of this treatment approach. The neurochemical basis for PTSD is hypothesized to involve kindling of the limbic nuclei and increased susceptibility to arousal. Anticonvulsants have been investigated as potential augmentation or monotherapy strategies to treat PTSD due to their anxiolytic and anti- kindling effects.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders (SUDs) co-occur at a significantly high rate, with estimates of PTSD and alcohol use disorder comorbidity ranging between 36 percent and 52 percent (Mills, Teesson, Ross, & Peters, 2006). Within the literature exists strong evidence of fundamental neurological and neuropsychological correlates of this comorbidity, each condition subject to the physiodynamic synergism of their coexistence. Neuroanatomical structures such as the dorsal and rostral anterior cingulate cortices (ACC), as well as the amygdala, have been implicated as bases for the seemingly adaptive self-medication of hyperarousal and other trauma-related states (Loflin, Earleywine, & Bonn-Miller, 2017; Vujanovic, Bonn-Miller, & Petry, 2016).

At the time, I did not know how I would incorporate this advice into my life, but I knew the advice was important. A few short months later, I arrived at graduate school, eager to begin down my career path to being a clinical psychologist contributing to the field of traumatic stress. As with other students in a variety of programs, I quickly realized graduate school is a never-ending supply of opportunities to grow as a person, clinician, and researcher.

I pursued doctoral training with a goal to deepen my understanding in the conceptualization and treatment of trauma-related difficulties, and ultimate aim of becoming a well-rounded trauma psychologist. My graduate school experiences provided me with unique opportunities to develop my therapy skills in treating trauma-exposed individuals. However, it was not until beginning my internship training within a Veterans Administration (VA) hospital that I became aware of the extent to which I had only begun to scratch the surface in my knowledge about the treatment of trauma-related conditions.